Unanimous Consent Request

Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown our country into a nightmare level crisis of joblessness. The Congress has not done enough to stop it and has not done enough to save the jobs of our people.

I have come to the floor this evening to call for the Senate to pass legislation that is all about saving the public sector jobs that form the backbone of our local communities, our firefighters, our first responders, our teachers, our families, and so many others. They need our help. They need it now.

Senate Democrats have been warning since March that when COVID-19 cases exploded and our economy went into lockdown, our States, our cities, and our towns are now facing budgetary disasters unlike any they have gone through in recent memory. The shortfalls that State and local governments are facing due to the pandemic make the great recession look like a modest little economic hiccup. Layoffs are now happening at nightmarish levels.

In March, April, and May, there were 1.5 million job losses. Among these key individuals were the firefighters, the first responders, our public employees, folks who teach our kids, work in public health, emergency response, and play a key role in maintaining our roads and highways. I am just going to take a few minutes to run through some specific examples of why Senate Democrats think this is so important.

First, what kind of sense does it make to sit back and allow thousands and thousands of first responders to lose their jobs in the middle of a pandemic? COVID-19 cases have spiked now in places around this country. Our public health systems are getting hit like they were hammered with a wrecking ball. State and local governments are being forced to cut EMS workers at the exact moment they need more first responders who know how to keep the ailing of this country safe.

Second, let me mention education. Our country is in danger of losing a generation of teachers if Congress does not act to save their jobs. The official jobs data showed that in April alone, just 1 month, nearly half a million K-12 employees lost their jobs--half a million. Education experts have estimated that hundreds of thousands of teachers could be permanently laid off without action.

Schoolchildren are already facing major setbacks due to the fact that they can't get the same level of face-to-face instruction during the pandemic. Far too many kids come from working families and are falling behind because they don't have the technology, and they don't have the support at home. Too many kids are hungry. Too many kids are neglected. Nobody knows when they are going to be back in class full time.

Helping those young people catch up when this pandemic ends is already going to be incredibly hard, and it will be even harder if the Nation loses hundreds of thousands of dedicated teachers in the meantime, and that is just K-12.

The COVID-19 crash is a disaster for Americans who want to get an affordable college degree as well. Our public colleges and universities are taking enormous losses. In my home State of Oregon, the losses added up to $130 million this spring. States are facing big, higher education budget cuts. School administrators are doing their best to plan for the future, but, still, they don't know when their campuses are going to go back to normal. You only have to look back to the great recession to see what is likely to happen next. More and more costs getting pushed onto more and more students and their working families. Two-thirds of the class of 2018 borrowed to pay for college, and those borrowers held an average of $30,000 in debt on graduation. Someday soon, that may be something like a bargain.

Third, our country's already crumbling infrastructure is going to get even worse if communities can't afford to invest in roads and highways and other essential infrastructure projects. It is a self-defeating prospect. If the Congress doesn't help communities tackle the projects now, they will cost even more down the road and when the maintenance backlog grows. Delaying these kinds of projects makes it even harder for local economies to recover because all those workers will be out of a job, and a lot of businesses don't want to invest in places where there is a crumbling infrastructure.

The proposal I offer tonight with the Democratic leader will help to save these jobs and stave off a whole lot of preventable economic hardship. One of the key lessons the Senate ought to remember from the great recession is that failing to support State and local budgets will prolong suffering across this country. It will slow down the recovery, and it will guarantee the country does not bounce back quickly in 2020.

Our proposal builds on legislation that has already passed the other body. It incorporates State and local portions of the Heroes Act that rescues firefighters, first responders, infrastructure jobs, and teachers. It also includes an important proposal for the rural West-- Secure Rural Schools and Payments in Lieu of Taxes, what is call SRS and PILT. Even before COVID-19, our rural communities started with weaker economies, fewer public health resources, and worse access to healthcare. They were bound to have a harder time responding to and from the pandemic.

Secure Rural Schools, which I authored with our former colleague, is all about bringing certainty and stability to communities and counties, often the frontline healthcare providers in far-out places. These are places where you have seen boom-and-bust traditional dependence on resource extraction, and there have been cycles where it is almost impossible, as the Presiding Officer knows, to plan for what is ahead.

Our proposal would create a permanent endowment of funds to provide a predictable source of funding for rural economic development, roads, and schools. Payment in lieu of taxes is all about providing that same kind of certainty to those who live in rural areas dominated by Federal lands. They have the same right as anybody else to reliable services: firefighters, safe roads, highways, and schools. Ten years of permanent mandatory payment in lieu of taxes will help those counties budget for the future.

I am going to close with one last argument I have heard from the other side and then yield to the distinguished Democratic leader. The other side often says that our ideas are some sort of blue State bailout. That is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Teachers are going to get pink slips in Texas, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Florida, and they aren't going to believe that saving their jobs is a blue State bailout. Of the 42 States and Territories covered by Secure Rural Schools, less than a handful are blue States.

The virus has absolutely no interest in political parties. It might hit Democratic States first, but it is now sweeping many parts of the country, including States that voted for Donald Trump.

Despite being small and rural and, generally, relatively remote, county governments that rely on Secure Rural Schools and payment in lieu of taxes are responding to the same national public health crisis facing larger cities and urban areas. This economic crisis is hitting everybody.

I don't want to see hundreds of thousands of teachers laid off anywhere--not in Oregon, not in Iowa, not in Texas, not in Kentucky. Especially when it is safe for kids to go back to school in person, I don't want them packed into classrooms with 40 or 50 other students. I don't want first responders to be laid off in the middle of a pandemic.

I don't want our Nation's roads and highways to crumble into even worse disrepair because the Congress failed to address the nationwide budget crisis. The Senate has an obligation to act.

I am now going to yield to the distinguished Democratic leader, and then I will offer a unanimous consent request to actually advance this critically important cause.

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues. A number have already given eloquent remarks, and we still have more to come. I know, per the agreement, that it is time to propound the unanimous consent request.

So, with the support of thousands of firefighters, first responders, teachers, county health providers, and thousands more Americans of both political parties with an extraordinary work ethic, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of the State, Local, and Tribal Fiscal Relief and Rural Stability Act, which is at the desk. I further ask that the bill be considered read three times and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, to make a very brief response--and I know my colleagues have been very patient--I just want to make sure that everybody really put in context the remarks the Senator from Florida made. He is basically saying that if you don't address healthcare now, if you don't address education now, if you don't address roads now, that somehow there aren't going to be any consequences.

There are going to be very real consequences. People are going to be sicker, for example. We are going to spend much more down the road. We have a weakened and smaller economy, and we will have that for an unknown amount of time.

My colleague mentioned his concern about weakened national security. How can a semi-permanently weakened economy not affect national security? Of course it is going to affect national security, and it is going to affect national security badly.

Finally, I will make one additional point, and I know my colleagues will address this as well. My colleague from Florida talks about deficits. I am the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, where we sat through my colleagues' tax bill--a bill that he voted for, and he strongly supported it and said it is going to pay for itself; what is to worry about?

Nobody does deficits better than that side of the aisle. Nobody does them better and bigger and in a more irresponsible way.

I wanted to put that in context. I look forward to the remarks of my friend from Connecticut and Nevada.

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